Biff’s Bit: DC leads the way …once more!

Brian Michael Bendis is bringing an intelligent cohesion to Superman and Action Comics. Now the group called ‘Leviathan’ are branching out and making a move right across the DC universe. This is going to be detailed fully in the six-issue miniseries Event Leviathan. This will be a must-have series for all DC fans and I recommend that you all take a chance and pick this one up. You might just regret it if you wait to check out the ‘buzz’ and find all early issues are sold out. Think Heroes In Crisis, Doomsday Clock and The Batman Who Laughs, quality series all and all early issues sold out or became highly priced.

I’m still loving Justice League and the sixth dimension storyline which comes to a giant sized conclusion in issue #25. Old school planning (see my ramblings last month) and it will be a winner.

Back at old Marvel

I am looking forward to reading the first issue of Marvel’s War Of The Realms. Despite the profusion of the additional miniseries, I plan to stick to the core. This story has been bubbling under for several years now, as any Thor reader will know, and I had almost given up hope on Jason Aaron getting around to the conclusion. Please, please, please be good. It does promise a world shattering ending… but don’t they all? What I really enjoy is for the plot to make sense, the characters to fit their long-standing motives and ideals, and for there to be a solid tying-up of loose ends.

A non-sequitor here… I have just finished reading Time of Death by Mark Billingham, a great detective novel that filled all the above principles. I loved the story and read the book in four days!

Joe Quesada denies

There has been talk online of Disney selling off Marvel Comics, or at least farming out titles to other publishers. Cosmic Book News and Bleeding Cool ran with articles on this which centred around a meeting of Marvel executives with Disney. Joe Quesada immediately twittered a robust response. However, it is a fact that Disney have their brand comics produced by Dark Horse Comics and IDW Publishing, with IDW also producing their Marvel and Star Wars young readers comics. If they do not make enough money, they do not like to create. Watch this space…

At the USA Comic Retailer Summit, much was made about how Marvel are driving 10% of US comic book stores out of business and making it difficult to stock many of the Marvel titles. Take the bi-weekly War of The Realms series with it’s multitude of additional miniseries, all of which have to be preordered well in advance, as an example. This event will mean all stores would have placed orders for four issues of the main miniseries and up to twelve additional miniseries issues before War of The Realms #1 hits the shelves, all with no sales information to guide them. In fact, by the time you can react to the sales of the debut issue, #5 and #6 need to be ordered. This means that the volume of orders being placed are low. Low sales = low profits = store closures.

I can confirm that this is a vexing issue in the UK too.

On a lighter note, see below…

Reading tip for the month:

Terry Moore’s new series Five Years is tying together Strangers in Paradise, Echo, Rachel Rising and Motor Girl. Still black and white, still positively brilliant, sublime, emotional and a master class in how to produce comics. I tip all my hats to you Terry!

Mission for the month:

If you’re not heading out to enjoy the lighter evenings of spring, it just means there’s more time to read comics, yeah!